


are you there god? it's me, betty

by kokomo (kokomocha)



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: Abandonment, Being Lost, Corruption, Depersonalization, Drabble, Gen, God Complex, I Was High When I Wrote This, Identity Issues, Insanity, Lowercase, Mild Language, Out of Character, Philosophy, Quotations, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Triggers, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:21:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29304150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kokomocha/pseuds/kokomo
Summary: she's coming undone.(takes place sometime during adventure time: elements before she gets the enchiridion)





	are you there god? it's me, betty

**Author's Note:**

> yo what up my glip glops its time for my yearly post
> 
> this was like uhhh super duper experimental and i didn't even know if i should post it?? but i was like ehhh fuck it whatever, its not gonna be as popular as my smut but like... i have been in isolation for months bro i am not thinking about s*x i am wondering what my purpose is. this started as a warmup for my philosophy paper
> 
> constructive criticism is always appreciated!! pls let me know if i misinterpreted any of the philosophers' doctrines, or if i didn't include the right religious reference. the views expressed by betty are not how i view religion personally, nor do i endorse calling anyone 'sheep' lmfao. i p much always type in lowercase bc its easier on my eyes and its for casual sake but pls lmk if the lowercase is too annoying to read and i will publish an updated correctly capitalized fic
> 
> NOBODY seems to talk about how Fucking Weird Ooo is. if i were suddenly transported to a world like that, i'd probably lose my marbles too. also i big big big love miss betty grof she is such a comfort character for me. magic woman i will Marry You

betty doesn’t remember much. 

the pointed hat fastened to her head sucked the memories from her, leeching off her deepest desires, hazing her memory with thick smoke clouds, keeping only enough around to serve as fodder for her crazed magicks. 

the clearest image in her mind was that of simon, and his eternal slumber in the soul of the ice king. 

that’s the only memory she needs, she thinks. 

betty, betty, my love....

betty, my princess...

the static pulsating through the harrowing scape of her mind grew more intense. it isn’t loud, per se, just reverberating at too high a frequency. like a dog whistle in her skull. with each breath she releases she allows a sliver of her sanity to escape, whatever is left of it. as long as that hat remains fastened to her head, she remains its prisoner.

betty. betty. betty... some indiscernible voice echoes in her mind.

its so much easier this way. so much better. untethered to the pitiful boundaries of human emotion, she allowed her indifference to deafen the meek voice of reason.

but is it right?

she works to recall definitive advice from the scholar within her.

“6.13: Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world.”

Wittgenstein composed this theorem long before the mushroom war, and their two timelines certainly did not coincide. she pondered, and wondered if his dogma would hold fast in a world as unforgiving and ridiculous as this. its very foundations disagree with pragmatic maths, seeming only the intangible and irrational infinites folded and sewn into the fabrics of their being. it was like if a multi-dimensional image were transcribed to a two-dimensional plane too swiftly, the inestible excess warped and misconstrued. she couldn’t even picture such a reality, and yet… anything was possible here. would her rationale represent what presented itself before her? _should_ it? would funneling blind faith into what manifested physically in this era provide a conclusion resolute and reflective enough to spare her sanity?

“6.21 A proposition of mathematics does not express a Thought.

6.211 …[w]e make use of mathematical propositions _only_ in inferences from propositions that do not belong to mathematics to others that likewise do not belong to mathematics.”

she sighs. perhaps reliance on an outdated mode of knowledge acquisition was insufficient. hell, they didn’t even count the years in this reality. Finn and The Dog couldn’t be more biologically different, including their ages, but they treated and referred to one another like twins. and this radical acceptance was deep-rooted into the very fibres of Finn’s subconscious, seeping into the thick integument of the soul. she gnawed at her pointer finger like a bone. she envied him. she envied the room in his heart, his chaotic good tendencies, his forgiveness. how could he not only accept this backwards funhouse shitshow, but _thrive_ here?

it’s all he knows, her rationale reassures her.

that’s right. he didn’t know anything besides ooo. he didn’t know Humanity, or their history. her history, his history.

a lot of her memory of the Real World was liquidated. maybe it was for her own good; reminiscing on her time before caused her great pain. the mediocracy of her day-to-day would be welcomed with open arms at this point. she missed patterns. she missed predictability.

enough, her reasoning pipes up, that world is gone. the entropic properties of this one shifted her realities disparate.

the principles constructive in her previous reality crumbled and dissipated. everything, everything from the creatures to the atmosphere to the goddamn foundational mathematics in this universe was incomparable. everything she knew and recognized as Real and Unreal began to unravel as she slowly acculturized to ooo. gone, and living only in a faltering memory bank.

she couldn’t seem to grasp that, despite the straws slipping through her fingers. she didn’t want this.

not all the bravehearted acceptance could motivate her. she loved simon, but was pulled into his nightmare with no discernable way out.

“No man can have in his mind an Image of infinite magnitude; nor conceive the ends, and bounds of the thing named; having no Conception of the thing, but of our own inability. And therefore the Name of GOD is used, not to make us conceive him; (for he is Incomprehensible; and his greatnesse, and power are unconceivable;) but that we may honour him.”

honour, huh? how to honour what is indetectable to the five senses? how to honour a god who abandoned this world? and dear Hobbes, how could any and all of this be reasonably conceivable? what incorrigible crimes did humanity commit to allow this abstract reality to exist? and how could a god hide his face from this… excrescence mockery of a reality? how do these people flourish so well under the oppressive thumb of free will and existential uncertainty?

and yet the psychological demands of ooo were weighing on her mind heavy enough to snap her neck.

the princess bubblegum played god with her citizens. betty thought it was disgusting. she’d vaguely recalled a religious backdrop to her childhood. she’d been raised by hungarian first-gens in a mild-mannered american suburb. her parents were catholic by nature but they didn't often go to church. this allowed her to adopt her own perceptions. she’d never reverenced god as some Infinite Higher Power, it just didn’t seem... conceivable. scientifically speaking, it seemed ridiculous. religion was born from the savage hands of man. it could not be revered as gospel. it is blindly comforting at best. she never sought to be soothed by her insecurities projected elsewhere. how could a mere figment of imagination fester into this conceptualization of a higher power that people _actually follow_? sheep, she mutters behind her clenched teeth.

she remembers being very young and asking her grandfather why people believed in god. she trusted him the most and knew he wouldn’t yell at her for her questions.

“is not in our power to decide if there is god or not. we simply follow, and pray we are right,” her grandfather cryptically lamented in his thick slovak accent. he rolled his fat brown cigar between his yellowing teeth and fanned the sunday paper out. she’d often wonder if he knew how to really read the latin alphabet or if he just liked to look at the grainy pictures. she remembers the dinner that night. her mother called her from the kitchen, washing carrots and potatoes with gentle hands, and promoted the young girl to sous-chef. she had hated helping with the food, and with diffident grip on the potato peeler, wondered casually if there was a god, and if so, then why make her suffer like this? partake in such torture he knew she hated? then her hand slipped and she sliced the skin on her finger.

funny. but what sticks out to her is that she can’t visualise her family’s facial features anymore. the lovely static blurred them out. it sank into the surrounding carpet around her opa’s reclining seat, diffusing around her mama’s hunched aproned body and into the sink, billows of smoke dissipating into a heavy monotone fuzz.

“They acquire, by long habit, such a turn of mind, that, upon the appearance of the cause, they immediately expect with assurance its usual attendant, and hardly conceive it possible that any other event could result from it. It is only on the discovery of extraordinary phenomena, such as earthquakes, pesti-lence, and prodigies of any kind, that they end themselves at a loss to assign a proper cause, and to explain the manner in which the effect is produced by it. It is usual for men, in such difficulties, to have recourse to some invisible intelligent principled as the immediate cause of that event which surprises them, and which, they think, cannot be accounted for from the common powers of nature.”

Hume, she muses. Hume, there is no god. there is only the shallow mourning of the lone soul as it ambles through the Passage of Life and the lengths it attempts to acquire any means of escaping the banality of its own existence. reality simply bends to the whims of entropy.

the static is so lovely, she thinks. to be consumed by one’s own emotions is to feel one’s mortality in full. but the mortality in her was gone, along with the sanity that accompanied it. a human vessel without human empathy. she was a Wizard. she’d relinquished her identity as a mortal in favour of the sweet indefinable power.

those emotions had been torture. they served as constant reminders of the life she left behind, which in turn fueled her desire to permeate the concepts of what Could and Couldn’t be possible in this world.

the more she thinks about her thoughts the louder the static roars. stills of her life lost in the sea of wintery fuzz. her memories of her childhood began to falter first. then images of her young adult years. recollections of The Time Before grew hazey with uncertainty. the catatonia induced by the magics of the hat was addictive and irreversible. she couldn’t help herself if she tried, she felt. she lost the faces of her friends, her family, herself. the mirror in her mindscape was shattered.

only one image remained untouched by static. simon, peeled to his bare essentials, rid of the ice king shawl and nappies, roaming just out of reach.

anything was conceivable in this backwards world. maybe Wittgenstein had a point. maybe she’d have to adopt an empiricist line of reasoning to function here. Feel, and do not Think about it too much.

don't think about anything too much. it causes the static. she learns to stop questioning the normalcy of ooo. because the more she thinks about it, the less any of it makes sense. biological abominations. sentient beings that should not be sentient. beings with modifications resulting from concerning evolution. entities that simply seemed to exist for the sake of a punchline. insects with the same functional capacity as humans. creatures with otherworldly molecular structure allowing them to bend and shape into nearly anything. _anything_. it was a scientific miracle and a living horror show.

she can’t take it.

she keels over and bursts into tears.

oh god. shiva, brahman, vishnu. allah. yahweh, elohim. jesus christ. jehovah. akal murat. akal purakh. siddhartha gautama. huwa. bhagavan, bhagawati. ahura mazda. she spits out each name under the sun she can think of, calling upon the Infinite Being in any way possible, extending her arms in an anguished plea.

god, god, god. i’m so sorry, she begs. please. please comfort me. please. i give in. please, please god. give me a sign. show me the way.

oh god, oh god. i repent for my sins. forgive me. forgive me. bathe me in the light of all that is holy. show me that this is okay.

but there is only silence.

she falters and catches her breath in desperate scoops, her insides churning in unease.

it was foolish of me to try, she muses, back on her feet, they’re much too busy to respond to me.

or maybe there was nothing on the receiving end to begin with.

can she be sure? her face turns white. its better to assume you’ve been abandoned than assume you’ve been saved.

...so who is left to depend on?

who is left?

who is left after simon loses himself to his crown? who is left when finn caters to the whims of this world in accordance to his nature? who is left when the world crumbles and peels apart, leaving only a husk and a rotting core? who is left when what is right is gone?

only her.

only i am left, she states. only me.

but why me?

was it me for a reason?

why was i chosen?

what is believed that i am capable of? who is god to assume?

maybe it’s not assumption, her reasoning says, although a bit muffled.

i have to remember simon, she thinks, i have to stay sane for him.

or is it the lack of sanity that's keeping her bound to him?

no, she muses, i am better than that. i am... better than all of this. 

a Descartes quote works its way to the surface of her mind.

“But perhaps I am something greater than I myself understand.

Perhaps all these perfections I am attributing to God are somehow in me potentially… For I now observe that my knowledge is gradually being increased, and I see nothing standing in the way of its being increased more and more to infinity.”

she smiles for the first time in what feels like forever.

**Author's Note:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING! this fic was purely indulgent and i worked pretty hard on it. i really don't care if this fic doesn't 'blow up' or whatever like some of my nsfw fics have, i really opened up to concepts i hadn't written about before. but what makes me happy is that you saw my shit intro and still decided to read this... thank you for giving me 15 min. of your time. i mean it. i opened up my soul and you listened! we might not have anything in common. we may live on different ends of the world, lead different lives. but we somehow met through our mutual love for a cartoon. i think that's pretty fuckn cool. 
> 
> thank you for your time. 
> 
> with love, kokomo


End file.
